800 million Pound-land

Now a store chain that sells every item for a pound and began life in Burton could be set to float on the stock market – valued at an astonishing £800 million.

Poundland is a company with which 80 per cent of the UK population has shopped, and today has profits of nearly £1 billion a year.

The idea came from David Dodd and Steve Smith.

Mr Smith got the trading bug by following in the footsteps of his father, who owned a market stall and then a cash and carry, when he opened his own discount business in West Bromwich at the age of 16.

He sold everything from radios to soap and was the real-life equivalent of Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter.

If any items had lost their packaging, they were put in a box and sold for 10p. The boxes always proved popular and the fixed-price idea was the inspiration behind Poundland.

The pair decided to pursue the idea and eventually, with the help of a £250,000 loan from Steve’s father Keith, decided Burton would be the place to start their empire.

Mr Smith said: “We would spend all day trying to convince landlords to let me open a shop where we sold everything for a pound.

“Eventually we found a shopping centre in Burton that was struggling to rent out units (The Octagon shopping centre).

“I convinced them to let me try to make it work at the beginning of December 1990. It was frantic trying to convince suppliers to give me stock in the run-up to Christmas.

“And I had to scrape together enough money to pay them.

“We opened that first shop on December 13 – and it sold out.”

It later emerged that the store sold close to £13,000 of stock on its first day.